Kathryn Beaumont - MIT Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/stream/24246/?sort=recent
enE-cyclinghttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/402525/e-cycling/
<p>Ecological engineering could help the electronics industry make more recycling-friendly equipment.</p><p>In February 2002, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Basel Action Network, watchdog groups that monitor the environmental practices of the high-tech industry, issued a report that described what happens to old computer and electronics equipment in the United States. Little gets recycled, the report claimed, and in many cases the waste is shipped to foreign countries, where its toxic materials-mercury from switches, lead from soldering, brominated flame retardants from plastics, and even toner from ink-jet printers-seep into the soil. The report was an embarrassment to many big American computer manufacturers and highlighted an increasingly important issue. As companies manufacture more high-tech products at a faster pace, where do the old products go?</p>Mon, 01 Mar 2004 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402525/e-cycling/For Love of the Gamehttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/402524/for-love-of-the-game/
<p>MIT has one of the country’s largest intercollegiate athletics programs, and its athletes are as competitive on the field as in the classroom.</p><p>By all accounts, Caroline Tien ‘04, captain of the women’s tennis team, had a successful fall season. She won the New England Women’s Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament, and her team finished the season with a winning 6-4 record. Still, she says, she wonders how much more successful her sports career would have been had she gone to a more tennis-oriented school. As a member of an MIT team, she says, she always has classwork in the back of her mind. “It’s hard, sometimes, to keep your mind on the match when you know you have three problem sets due the next day.” But, Tien says, she didn’t come to MIT to play tennis; she came to study architecture. Playing tennis was just one of the many rigorous pursuits she took part in at MIT-only this one provided a much needed break from the challenges of schoolwork. </p>Mon, 01 Mar 2004 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402524/for-love-of-the-game/A Model Village for the Worldhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/402314/a-model-village-for-the-world/
<p>A new earthquake-proof village in Turkey offers residents instant community.</p><p>On August 17, 1999, the earth shook under Turkey’s North Anatolian fault, triggering an earthquake that registered 7.4 on the Richter scale and destroyed towns and villages in southwest Turkey between Istanbul and Ankara. More than 25,000 people died-almost all of them in building collapses.</p>Mon, 01 Dec 2003 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402314/a-model-village-for-the-world/The Man behind the Monsterhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/402235/the-man-behind-the-monster/
<p>As scientific consultant for The Hulk, John Underkoffler developed a plausible explanation for the comic-strip character’s researcher-to-green-creature transformation.</p><p>For 40 years, superhero enthusiasts have followed the comic-strip travails of Bruce Banner, a placid scientist who morphs into a raging green monster after accidental exposure to gamma ray radiation. When director Ang Lee began his big-screen adaptation, <em>The Hulk</em>, he wanted to keep the comic strip’s original story line, but with a 21st-century spin. So he hired John Underkoffler ‘88, SM ‘91, PhD ‘99, a former researcher at the Media Lab, to investigate and consolidate cutting-edge science that would explain Bruce Banner’s gamma-ray-induced transformation.</p>Sat, 01 Nov 2003 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402235/the-man-behind-the-monster/